Events in celebration of the Akron, Ohio club’s centennial include an April 20 cocktail party and a themed gala in September. The property’s current Founders Room will soon become a Heritage Tribute Room paying homage to the club’s past, including side-by-side comparisons of the golf course’s original layout and its current design.
Fairlawn Country Club in Akron, Ohio has remained firmly rooted in the community for a century, and members are proud of the milestone, the Akron-based West Side Leader reported.
“We are celebrating the fact that we owe our forbearers a lot of credit for laying the groundwork to get us this far,” said member Linda Liesem.
Events in celebration of the centennial include an April 20 cocktail party and a themed gala in September for club members and guests, the Leader reported.
Created in the hinterland to entice people to build homes nearby, the golf club was the vision of Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co. co-founder F.A. Seiberling, who saw it as a complement to Fairlawn Heights. Not long after the last brick was laid on his own Stan Hywet Hall, Seiberling set out to develop 1,000 acres of housing, with 200 acres set aside for a golf course, the Leader reported.
According to Liesem, Seiberling conjured up the idea for the development and golf club before the onset of World War I but held off on carrying out his plans until the tide of the war started to turn. On April 20, 1917, Seiberling, along with a small group of local businessmen, filed the articles of incorporation for what was then called Fairlawn Heights Golf Club, the Leader reported.
At first, the membership fee was $50 and annual dues cost $30. Club founders set the goal of committing 250 members, a number they reached quickly, Liesem said. “They envisioned a club that would be very democratic and egalitarian,” she said.
Liesem noted her research on the club’s early days also led her to the conclusion that the founders wanted the club to be accessible to everyone. Today, the club employs nearly 200 people and does considerable business with local companies for equipment, food, flowers and more, said General Manager Tom Elliott.
“We’ll spend in excess of $5 million in our community per year. We are benefiting the community, plus the green space that’s here,” he said.
Nine holes of golf opened in 1919, the same year work began on a clubhouse. In 1929, nine additional holes were added. That same year, a fire caused by faulty electric wiring burnt the original clubhouse to the ground, with damage estimated at $100,000, said Liesem.
The next year, however, construction began on a new building at the clubhouse’s current site. Over the years, the clubhouse has been added on to several times, the last time about 15 years ago, said Elliott. Renovations to the existing space are ongoing, he added, including building a pavilion for outdoor dining and golf practice area and driving range this past year, the Leader reported.
The current Founders Room will soon become a Heritage Tribute Room paying homage to the club’s past, Elliott said. The redesigned room will include facades of the original clubhouse and the building as it was first built on the current site, along with side-by-side representations of the original layout of the golf course and its current design, Elliott said.
Over the years, the club has nimbly adapted to the changing world around it, the Leader reported.
“I think one of the things this club has been very successful at is continuing to evolve and grow to meet the needs of the membership as it changes. The old style of club dining rooms are by nature a bit stuffy,” Elliott said. “You’d never see a TV in a dining room, but in today’s society that is something that’s become very commonplace, so we’ve adapted and evolved.”
Once considered the curse of the country club, denim is no longer prohibited, added Elliott. Another obvious shift is in the makeup of club members, who once were only men, the Leader reported.
“There were restrictions on women’s ability to be members and women’s ability to play [golf] during certain times,” said Liesem. “That was a vestige of yesteryear that has for us completely fallen by the wayside.”
However, in at least one important way, Fairlawn Country Club has remained the same for 100 years. “One thing the club was always good at was family fun,” said Liesem. “The golf may have been dominated by the men, but the families dominated the fun. And that is definitely still the case here,” she said.
Today’s membership is made up of more than 600 families, which amounts to around 1,500 to 2,000 club users, the Leader reported.
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